Susan Welsh (asker) Nov 17, 2018:

@herbalchemist I like it, added it to the glossary, and will include it in suggested options for the authors, while retaining my "plain vanilla" version.

Susan Welsh (asker) Nov 17, 2018:

@Anne Thanks for your comment. There is no explicit reference to Heidegger in the text.

Herbmione Granger Nov 17, 2018:

Late suggestion No-longer-thereness

Heidegger's Dasein is best not translated. "Thrownness" (Geworfenheit) has been thrown around.

Susan Welsh (asker) Nov 17, 2018:

@Björn No offense taken. I changed the glossary as you suggested - a good idea. As for "the risk [of my] sounding like one of the 'uninitiated' who have only read the Wiki summary of Heidegger," I don't qualify! I have not even read the Wiki summary of Heiddeger, and don't intend to unless compelled by circumstances beyond my control. (My "clunky" version pertained to the earlier part of the sentence, which I had translated too literally. You wouldn't have liked it any better than I did!)//PS - I almost always close questions quickly, mainly to prevent myself from obsessing about these things for days!

Anne Schulz Nov 17, 2018:

@Susan FWIW, I would like to second your choice. I have seen many texts where people (doctors, researchers) refer to some pretentious sources without ever taking the trouble to understand (in depth, or at all) what their reference really says. Even if some reference is made to Heidegger (your posting does not tell us where and how this is the case), it is really not unlikely that the authors may refer or hint, and then go on using the terminology according to their own rather than Heidegger's thinking.

Björn Vrooman Nov 17, 2018:

Hello Susan As said, I am not trying to be offensive, but I have experience in this particular field (read thousands of pages) and it may have irked me a bit that I wasn't able to contribute in time =)

I saw this question earlier, but I still had to work. When I came back to it, just one day after you posted it, it had been closed.

Also, the glossary should, in my opinion, be changed to indicate that there is more than one answer to this question.

That being said, I felt the need to point out that the advice given in two of the answers is just not OK. I hope I explain this correctly, but if there is a word with a specific meaning in your text and you start using "everyday language," as has been suggested, you risk sounding like one of the "uninitiated" who have only read the Wiki summary of Heidegger.

That would be worse than making it complicated. It's science, not a shopping list. Plus, you did ask how it was usually translated. Considering the above, I would have certainly preferred your "clunky" version =)

Best wishes and enjoy your evening

Susan Welsh (asker) Nov 17, 2018:

@Björn Thanks for your input. This being an article written by psychologists for other psychologists, and not for philosophers, I think my decision makes sense, as I explained it. The word Dasein (which was not in any case my "search term") is much too complex to be understood simply as "being in the world" or "being there." Perhaps I will add a query to the authors and suggest something more Heideggerian as an option. (I played around with using the word "void," but ended up with the monstrosity "avoidance of the void...," and threw in the towel!)

Björn Vrooman Nov 17, 2018:

Hello Susan Quite frankly, I'm surprised this time and I don't understand why you didn't see these links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heideggerian_terminology
http://royby.com/philosophy/pages/dasein.html
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heidegger/

You even said: "...but I wonder if there's a way this is normally translated in (Heideggerian?) philosophy..."

Dasein = being-in-the-world or being there

Cf
"Bragdon expresses such feelings both playfully and earnestly to approach the real theme of his art—existence—a concept philosopher Martin Heidegger has defined as 'being there' or 'being-in-the-world.'"

Lancashireman's answer is closest (in fact, it's part of the first link).

I studied sociology and had to read a lot of ENS material related to philosophy (Hegel is, of course, someone who's mentioned quite often, but Heidegger was too).

I must say, and don't take this the wrong way, that two of the three answers may sound OK to people who typically translate other kinds of documents, but you're effectively going to butcher the text by "simplifying" it--not to mention that Phil's assumption is wrong (it's a central theme of Heidegger's!).

Best wishes

Ramey Rieger (X) Nov 17, 2018:

As I understand it Heidegger sees this as 'devoid of being', a negation of being/existance a void. A black hole of being.

Anne Schulz Nov 16, 2018:

Oh! The resources popping up in that Google search you posted seem to point to yet another (implied) meaning: the future "Nicht-mehr-da-Sein" of the bereaved person themselves?!

Susan Welsh (asker) Nov 16, 2018:

Heidegger To clarify: the phrase is from Heidegger. https://www.google.com/search?q="Nicht-mehr-da-Sein" heidegg...
Sorry about misspelling the phrase in my header (final "s"). Unfortunately I can't fix it.

Susan Welsh (asker) Nov 16, 2018:

Thank you, Anne That's exactly what's going on here. Not sure how to translate it, but your contribution moves the discussion from "how do I translate this word??" to the realm of what "prolonged grief" actually means to a human being.

Anne Schulz Nov 16, 2018:

I am not familiar with Heidegger's thinking, but I am a bereaved person, and I understand "Nicht-mehr-da-Sein" in a more tangible way than the colleagues. This is (possibly) not the general, abstract "fact that", but a physical voidness you experience in every place and in every situation where the deceased used to be or act.